Bodies recovered from Austria tunnel fire

Rescue workers in Austria have recovered the first victims of Saturday's fire in an Alpine train tunnel.

A spokesman for the emergency services said twenty-nine bodies had been moved to an annex of the tunnel, from where they are being brought to the surface.

He said the bodies had been relatively easy to reach, but added that rescuers were working in atrocious conditions and warned it could take a week to recover all the dead.

Austrian police say they now fear that one-hundred-and-fifty-nine people were killed in the fire.

Among the dead was a party of more than thirty members of the local government of the Austrian town of Wels and their families and friends. The local council was devastated eleven years ago when eleven members of staff died in a hotel fire in Turkey.

The fire also claimed the life of a world skiing champion, the German, Sandra Schmitt. Most of the victims came from Austria and Germany but others nationalities known to be on the mountain train were Japanese, Americans and Slovenes.

The bodies -- most of which are so badly burned they will have to be formally identified using DNA analysis -- will be sent to Salzburg for forensic tests.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service